Welcome to NY BioHud Valley. It”™s open for business.
Led by the Hudson Valley Economic Development Corp., a public-private partnership has launched that geographical brand and a cooperative marketing campaign to make the seven-county region an East Coast Silicon Valley for biotechnology companies.
“It”™s an extraordinary opportunity,” U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said recently at The Landmark at Eastview headquarters of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., where the regional brand logo was unveiled. Regeneron is the state”™s largest biotech employer and a member of NY BioHud Valley”™s 11-member advisory council of businesses.
Calling private biotech development “the future of our economy” in the region, Gillibrand has joined business and county and state government leaders in their shared mission to attract more companies to the valley”™s cluster of more than 60 biotech and pharmaceutical companies and to assist those already here with jobs-creating expansion.
“We are home to a well-educated work force, world-class research institutions, medical centers, laboratories and academic research organizations,” Gillibrand said. The marketing campaign will reinforce the Hudson Valley”™s stature as the “burgeoning epicenter” of the biotech industry, she said.
Investment needed for growth
Gillibrand said both federal investment and expanded private-sector investment in research and development are needed to stimulate jobs growth and new economic solutions that reduce the federal deficit. Toward that end, she said she is pushing in Congress for a permanent extension of the federal tax credit to companies for research and development spending.
Westchester County Economic Development Director Laurence Gottlieb said the 17 biotech firms in the county “were surviving and thriving” even in the deep recession. The county”™s and New York”™s fastest-growing biotech company, Regeneron, by the end of 2010 will have added 500 employees to the 1,000-employee work force with which it began the year, Regeneron President and CEO Leonard S. Schliefer said at the brand unveiling.
Schliefer said companies need to spread the message that “if you want to be in biotech, you need to be in the Hudson Valley.”¦ Why here in the Hudson Valley? It”™s the people and talent in the area” available to companies seeking top scientists, he said.
Branding campaign begins
Hudson Valley Economic Development Corp. officials said campaign partners will aggressively market NY BioHud Valley to biotech companies, real estate brokers and site selectors. The branding will be available for use by county and state agencies, property owners, developers and businesses in the region.
“Our hope is that eventually it takes on a life of its own,” Gottlieb said.
The regional branding launch follows Westchester County”™s recent unveiling of its three-year campaign to market the county as “New York”™s intellectual capital” with $300,000 in funding from the county Industrial Development Agency. “Even though Westchester County has the lion”™s share of these companies,” said Gottlieb, “in reality you have to work with a regional partnership” to attract federal funding. He said NY BioHud Valley partners will pursue government funding sources in 2011.
OSI move was a setback
The regional initiative was dealt a setback in the summer when Long Island-based OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc. abandoned its plans to relocate about 350 employees and consolidate its U.S. operations at the Ardsley Park Science and Technology Center on Saw Mill River Road in the town of Greenburgh.
Though the move to the former Purdue Pharma Inc. campus had begun with about 55 employees, the cancer drug developer”™s new owner, Japan”™s Astellas Pharma Inc., changed course following its $4-billion takeover and announced it will close the Ardsley facility in 2011. OSI paid $27 million for the largely vacant office complex and 43-acre property and expected to spend more than $95 million in total acquisition and renovation costs.
Astellas Pharma U.S. Inc., OSI”™s new parent company, is a member of the NY BioHud Valley advisory council. Also on the council are Aureon Laboratories Inc., a biotech company in Yonkers; BioMed Realty Trust Inc., owner of The Landmark at Eastview campus; C. W. Brown Inc., a construction contractor in Armonk; IBM at East Fishkill; M&T Bank, the regional bank headquartered in Buffalo; National RE/Sources, an industrial redeveloper and residential developer in Greenwich, Conn.; New York Medical College in Valhalla; Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate – Rand Realty, headquartered in New City, and TD Bank N.A., based in Cherry Hill, N.J.
The NY BioHud Valley logo was designed by Stacey Cohen, president of Co-Communications Inc. in Mount Kisco, and Sherry Bruck, creative director of Harquin Creative Group in Pelham.
